A Cenotaph For Living

A phenomenological approach to climate

Masters of Architecture Design Thesis

There are various boundaries that separate and define our existence in the world and how we relate to our sense of Being and presence: the inner mind, the human body, the environment, culture and society, the world. The poet Rilke coined the word ‘World-innerspace’. Translated from ‘Weltinnenraum’, it is a portmanteau of the German words ‘welt’ – world and ‘innenraum’ – interior. The word describes a space where there is no boundary between our inner consciousness and our perception of the outer world. This is where the territorial line between inner self and outer space is blurred, the edge of the mind where we process our sense of self within the environment.

This describes the delicate relationship between the architectural body and the human body. For architecture to inspire a state of presence and awareness of being in within their immediate surroundings, and in their larger social and cultural context. To be in the world being part of a moment, and yet also being part of something larger than they are.

In exploring climate and phenomenology, it is a combination of three elements: the mind, awareness and climate as the medium. The mind is the ecological function, where it makes the physical interconnection between the self and the environment. Awareness is the medium in which we’re situated; we are in it and of it, being unable to remove ourselves from being aware without ceasing to exist. Climate as the medium brings us familiarity through memory and experience. A personal experience of the climate is transitory, elusive and shifting, and of temporal orderliness where seasons and cycles structure time. The space we experience when we experience weather or climate is a local, micro space as compared to the macro view of climate.

Creating a pavilion that glows with life in rain or dark, it appeals in different weather conditions and allow rhythmic changes to play over physical space. ‘A cenotaph for living’ is seemingly contradictory, but it seeks to be a reminder over a remembrance, a deliberate empty tomb as we’re still alive but have forgotten what it means to be present and aware of the natural cycles around us.